England legend Wilkins missed in Milan and M’sia
RAY Wilkins will be remembered as an inspirational captain of England and Chelsea, but in recent years, he’d also built a strong connection to Asia.
The classy midfielder died on Wednesday at London’s St George’s Hospital after failing to recover from a cardiac arrest last month.
At the age of 61, it was a cruelly premature end to a football career that saw him playing until after his 40th birthday and working as a manager less than three years ago.
Wilkins was assistant to Tim Sherwood at Aston Villa for part of the 2015-16 Premier League season, and a few months earlier led Jordan at the 2015 Asian Cup in Australia.
The ex- Manchester United favourite was a surprising choice to guide the Middle Eastern nation in September 2014. At the tournament itself, he oversaw a 5-1 victory over tournament debutants Palestine in Melbourne, but suf fered narrow losses to Japan and Iraq.
After a career that saw him earn 84 England caps and appear in the 1982 and 1986 World Cups, Wilkins remained a drawcard in Southeast Asia. In 2012, he joined Football Masters Asia on their tour of Indonesia, and in 2015 he was a guest pundit for Astro SuperSport in Malaysia.
This weekend will mark the third anniversary of a public appearance in Kuala Lumpur where he met and greeted fans at Berjaya Times Square.
In the past decade, Wilkins was a prominent face in the Chelsea dugout as an assistant to Guus Hiddink and Carlo Ancelotti. He was considered a crucial part of Ancelotti’s 200910 Premier League success in a team that boasted the likes of Frank Lampard, John Terry and Didier Drogba.
In his autobiography, Ancelotti was lavish in his praise of the man who’d spent six years at Stamford Bridge as a star player and was appointed club captain at the age of just 18.
“Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue- blood,” Ancelotti wrote in The Beautiful Game of an Ordinary Genius. “Chelsea flows in his veins… without him, we wouldn’t have won a thing.”
The fol lowing season, I interviewed Wilkins at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground for Malaysia’s Astro SuperSport. I found him thoughtful, insightful and courteous – qualities that put him in high demand as a media pundit.
He ended our interview with a greeting to then Kuala Lumpurbased Astro pundit Peter Barnes, another former international and Manchester United player with whom he shared a room at youth level for England.
And yet, within two months, Wilkins was sacked by Chelsea. He wasn’t given a definitive explanation, but the rumours were that he’d somehow offended the club’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich.
Ancelotti would himself part ways with Chelsea at the end of the season as the club struggled to replicate its title- winning form.
Sadly, Wilkins’ departure from his beloved Blues saw him enter a period of heavy drinking that was also visible on his trips to Asia. In 2013, he was banned from driving for four years after being stopped with a blood alcohol reading almost four times the legal limit. Three years later, he underwent a five-week rehabilitation programme in England after finally admitting that he was an alcoholic.
His recent health problems also included being diagnosed for ulcerative colitis, a painful condition which results in inflammation of the colon and rectum.
It was so di f ferent as a player when Wilkins earned the nickname of ‘ Butch’ due to his physical durability and masculine good looks, amassing a staggering 789 games of senior football over 24 years. A testament of his quality was the fact that he was playing in Scotland’s top flight for Hibernian in the 1996- 97 season as he turned 40 years old.
Technically gifted and rarely giving the ball away, Wilkins was also unfairly criticised for a tendency to pass the ball sideways – compared to a lateralmoving crab – but his five seasons at Old Trafford, and moves to AC Milan and Paris Saint- German, proved just what a hot property he was.
Indeed, just hours af ter Wilkins’ death, the Milan derby was played on Wednesday night with a special tribute to the man who played 73 games for the club between 1984- 87. His former captain Franco Baresi touchingly placed a bouquet flowers next to Wilkins’ old shirt on the San Siro pitch.
Wilkins left the football world, far too young. And from Milan to Malaysia, ‘Butch’ will be sorely missed for his grace and style, on and off the field.
Former Astro host Jason Dasey is Singapore-based TV broadcaster and event emcee. Twitter: @ JasonDasey